Care
Healthcare
Babies are delivered at a short list of hospitals. The map marks the nearest one to each town, using what that hospital says on its own site. A rural town can be a long drive from a birth hospital even when a smaller emergency room is closer.
Birth and the emergency room
Turn on Hospitals, then Birth, on the map. These are the nearest birth hospitals the map uses for a few places people actually look, measured from the Census town point with no traffic:
- Manchester: Elliot Hospital, about 3 minutes. Nashua: St. Joseph Hospital, about 3 minutes.
- Concord: Concord Hospital, about 11 minutes. Portsmouth: Portsmouth Regional Hospital, about 6 minutes.
- Keene: Cheshire Medical Center, about 8 minutes. Lebanon and Hanover: Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock, about 17 to 19 minutes.
- Berlin: Androscoggin Valley Hospital, about 33 minutes. Laconia’s nearest birth hospital on the map is Speare Memorial in Plymouth, about 36 minutes. Laconia’s emergency room is Lakes Region General.
- Colebrook’s nearest birth hospital on the map is Androscoggin Valley, about 89 minutes. The local emergency room is Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital.
Call the hospital before you count on a delivery there. A town’s emergency room and its birth hospital are not always the same building.
A regular doctor
There is no single official wait time for a new primary-care patient on this page. Call offices in the town you are considering during the first weeks, not after someone is sick. The big systems families run into are Elliot and Catholic Medical Center in the Manchester area, Concord Hospital, and Dartmouth Health in the Upper Valley.
Coverage when you move
New Hampshire uses HealthCare.gov. There is no state exchange. Open enrollment runs November 1 to January 15. A move can open a 60-day special enrollment window. The Insurance Department lists Ambetter, Anthem / Matthew Thornton, Harvard Pilgrim, and WellSense as the companies on that marketplace.
About 5.5 percent of people under 65 have no health insurance. If income may qualify you for Medicaid, apply through the Department of Health and Human Services. The department decides. Compare plans on HealthCare.gov rather than guessing a premium from a list of names.
Sources
- Nearest birth hospital and drive minutes: the map, built from each hospital’s own site and a no-traffic drive from the Census town point. Open the Birth layer to check the town you want.
- NH Insurance Department — Marketplace — who sells, and open enrollment.
- HealthCare.gov — special enrollment — moving.
- NH DHHS — Medicaid for adults
- Census QuickFacts — 5.5 percent of people under 65 without health insurance.